


Tales of a Teenaged Werewolf

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-25 07:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7524478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Would it have been so difficult, Steve wondered, to send out a few pamphlets - "So You're a Werewolf!" or maybe, "Becoming a Slavering Beast for Dummies" - to help the  unsuspecting human you'd bitten on the last full moon? At least then he might know why he kept ending up in the Barneses' yard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tales of a Teenaged Werewolf

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt I no longer recall, probably from one of the AU lists of prompts on tumblr. And look, there's almost no angst!

“ _Steve_?” Bucky’s voice startled Steve out of his doze – he hadn’t meant to fall asleep, he’d intended to stumble to his feet and figure out how to get home before dawn, but it turned out that having all your bones rearranged was _exhausting_ – and he hurriedly rolled to his feet.

Well, he tried to. Mostly he groaned and smashed his face into the dew-drenched grass.

“Steve!”

“’m fine,” he told the grass, reveling in the chill of the morning air on his now constantly overheated skin.

“You’re naked and sleeping on my front lawn,” Bucky said, jamming his hands under Steve’s arms and hauling him into a sitting position. “You might be fine now, but you won’t be in thirty minutes when old Mrs. Hannigan across the street wakes up and calls the police.”

Bucky had a point there, Steve admitted. He propped Steve up against his legs and proceeded to towel off Steve’s damp head, as though his best friend turned up naked on his lawn every week. Steve was beginning to think he should have been bitten by a werewolf years ago, if it got Bucky’s hands combing through his hair.

Only, no, because he was _naked_ in Bucky’s _yard_. His mother was going to kill him.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked, pulling Steve to his feet and wrapping the towel around his waist. Steve was relieved that his entire body ached and his right calf was cramping, or the feeling of Bucky’s fingers dragging just over his hipbone might have done him in.

“What do you mean?” Steve replied too fast, tripping over the words. “Nothing’s wrong.” He shook his head hard, and Bucky snorted.

“Punk, you were mooning my Mom over her morning coffee. Nothing’s wrong?” All Steve’s blood rushed to his face, his entire chest flushed red. His mother really was going to _kill_ him.

“Uh,” he stuttered. “Just, um, just, it was a really wild night.” Which was true. Steve vaguely recalled hunting for his dinner, and that was pretty wild, as things went.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Pal, it’s a Tuesday. And I’m the quarterback. You’re telling me you went to a party on a _Monday night_ that I didn’t even hear about?”

“Modest, aren’t you?” Steve griped, and Bucky laughed, tilted his head back and chortled at the lightening sky.

Maybe being mauled by a supernatural creature and turned into a ravening beast wasn’t so bad, if it got him Bucky’s smile lit by the dawn.

“Steven,” Mrs. Barnes called, sticking her head out the front door, still in her bathrobe and rollers. “Did you want some toast with those hard-boiled eggs of yours?”

Steve debated taking the towel and making a run for it, despite not knowing where his clothes were or whether he would make it a block before Mrs. Hannigan called the cops.

Bucky had his mother’s diabolical grin, and Steve decided being a werewolf was, in fact, as bad as he had originally thought. Worse, even, because Mrs. Barnes popped him on his towel-clad ass with her morning paper as he slunk inside.

* * *

“Is this some sort of cult thing?” Bucky asked twenty-eight mornings later, chucking a blanket onto Steve and flopping down beside him in the back yard to gaze at the fading violet of the night sky.

“Ungh,” Steve informed him, still trying to breathe through the grinding pain of having his facial bones flattened and his joints broken and reassembled, worse than rheumatic fever and the measles combined.

“Because Mom doesn’t mind when you stay over, but she really prefers it when we’re both inside and you’re wearing clothes. And Dad thinks you’re getting some bad medication.” Bucky paused, reaching out to tug the blanket off Steve’s face – Steve’s asthma had fled with the bite, but Bucky didn’t know that, and something in Steve’s chest warmed at the gesture. “Also,” Bucky added, “Becky is sort of at an impressionable age, and I would really prefer she didn’t see naked people on our lawn. She sees enough of them on the internet.”

Steve choked on his own saliva, and Bucky pounded his back until Steve shoved him away.

He wasn’t actually sure why he kept ending up on Bucky’s lawn. This time he’d even prepared – had borrowed his Ma’s car and driven into the protected forest ten miles away, sure that he would chase rabbits and probably wake up freezing in a river somewhere in the woods.

He really wished there was a werewolf handbook somewhere, to explain these sorts of things.

Bucky slung an arm around Steve’s shoulders, the fabric of his old thermal top scratchy against Steve’s oversensitive skin. “Besides,” Bucky said, “You really shouldn’t be out here at night. Alice and Nonie were toasting marshmallows at the fire pit last night and thought they saw a feral dog.”

Steve’s mouth went dry. Bucky’s baby sisters, the twins, out after dark on the night of a full moon. They would turn eight in a month, and had been begging Steve and Bucky to take them to the amusement park, swearing they were tall enough now for the roller coasters. He had been living with the Barneses when the girls were born, his Ma still in the hospital with TB. The twins were the little sisters he’d never had.

And he would have ripped out their throats, hours ago, a feral dog too close to the Barnes home.

“I should go,” he managed, even though he was shaking too hard to stand. Bucky’s arm tightened around his shoulders, and Steve flinched.

“You should come eat some of the pancakes the devil children are making for you,” Bucky contradicted him, leaning his head against Steve’s, pressing comfort into Steve’s skin the way he had through countless childhood illnesses, the way he’d held Steve’s hand in the hospital when they were ten and the doctors thought Steve was going to die. “They added a whole bag of chocolate chips.”

“I –” Steve didn’t know how to say it. _I’m dangerous_. “Bucky –”

“We’ll figure it out,” Bucky interrupted, wrapping his other arm around Steve’s chest, shifting so that their foreheads were pressed together, his pale eyes boring steadily into Steve’s. “Whatever it is, Steve, we’ll figure it out.”

And Steve wanted so badly for that to be true.

* * *

“You moron,” someone said, not for the first time if the tone of voice was anything to go by. “You fucking _idiot_. These are things you tell your best friend!”

Something in that sentence caught Steve’s attention, even as he lay panting on the ground in the dark, the moon only just below the horizon. _Best friend._ Shit. Bucky. “I -” he tried to say, but his vocal cords hadn’t finished transforming and all he managed was a faint croak.

Cool, gentle hands slid over his skin, tempering the fiery pain licking through Steve’s muscles and leaking out every pore. “Shh,” Bucky whispered, laying down next to Steve and tugging him into a loose embrace. “Shh, you dumbass, I’ve got you.”

Pain cleared Steve’s head quickly. If Bucky was with him, then he must be on Bucky’s lawn _again_ , despite locking himself in the basement of the abandoned Stark mansion at the edge of town. Damn it. _The girls!_

“Al – Nonie?” he coughed, struggling weakly in Bucky’s arms.

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky informed him, the same term of affection he'd given Steve when they were five. “You saved their lives, you know?”

Steve frowned, and wiggled around until he was facing Bucky, their noses brushing and Bucky’s eyes almost silver in the dark. “That feral dog they saw last time?” Bucky continued, sure that he had Steve’s attention. “That wasn’t you, punk. That was some other werewolf.” Steve blinked. He hadn’t considered that. Hadn’t even considered that there _were_ more werewolves, beyond the crazy man that had bitten him. “You came close to tearing his snout off before he could even think about attacking them. They’re telling their friends we have the best guard dog ever.” Bucky paused, snickering, his breath warm against Steve’s face. “I think they left a bowl of water and a steak bone for you, if you’re hungry.”

Steve scowled at Bucky’s smirk. “This isn’t funny!” he insisted hoarsely. “Bucky, I could –”

“Save my family’s lives?” Bucky finished for him, raising both eyebrows and shaking his head a little, telegraphing his disbelief at the fear in Steve’s eyes. “You’re not a threat, Steve. Not to us.” Bucky kept his eyes on Steve’s, even as he tilted his head just close enough to press his lips to Steve’s in a brief, quiet kiss. Steve dug his fingers into Bucky’s waist and held on.

“Do you boys have condoms?” Mrs. Barnes called through the back door, loud enough to wake the neighborhood and send Steve into another full-body blush – but that was all right. Steve had decided being a werewolf wasn’t so bad, if it put Bucky in his arms and Bucky’s mouth on his.

“I think your father has a box somewhere, from before the vasectomy,” she added blithely. Bucky’s face blanched, and Steve tried to gauge how quickly old Mrs. Hannigan would call the cops, if he grabbed Bucky’s hand and streaked across her yard in a naked run for the hills.


End file.
